Describe how carbon 14 is used in radiocarbon dating

In this way large domed tombs (known as tholos or beehive tombs) in Greece were thought to predate similar structures in the Scottish Island of Maeshowe.This supported the idea that the classical worlds of Greece and Rome were at the centre of all innovations.Some of the first radiocarbon dates produced showed that the Scottish tombs were thousands of years older than those in Greece.The barbarians of the north were capable of designing complex structures similar to those in the classical world.The total mass of the isotope is indicated by the numerical superscript.

Radiocarbon dating has also been used to date the extinction of the woolly mammoth and contributed to the debate over whether modern humans and Neanderthals met.Isotopes of a particular element have the same number of protons in their nucleus, but different numbers of neutrons.This means that although they are very similar chemically, they have different masses.This method requires less than 1g of bone, but few countries can afford more than one or two AMSs, which cost more than A0,000.Australia has two machines dedicated to radiocarbon analysis, and they are out of reach for much of the developing world.